Room 207
by titaniumbreadcrumbs
Summary: A girl named Hazel finds herself in Gregory House, and so many things happen.


I awoke to the sound of hushed mumbling from a seemingly distant crowd. As everything went into focus, the room went dead silent. I tried to let out a scream, but I was so tired, the task was nearly impossible, even to try. Why would anyone even attempt to scream? Well, the creatures surrounding me were hellish-looking entities of assorted shapes and sizes, each looking almost equally as frightening. Well, other than the ones who greeted me.

"W-Welcome to Gregory's House."

He wasn't anything like I expected. He seemed young enough, probably around 8 or 9 years old. The real kicker was that he was a child-sized mouse, which was, arguably, the least scary thing here.

"Shut up, runt. Gregory told ME to great her." growled a devilish dog before turning into a mess of sparkles and bright colors.

"Hiiii! I'm Angel Dog, and we should probably tell Gregory that you're here. Come with me."

We walked for quite a bit, passing multiple locked blue doors with assorted numbers. I wanted to ask what was inside some of rooms, but chose against it, thinking of how important this "Gregory" fellow would be. It seemed like it was taking forever. I mean, until _that _moment happened.

After a few monotonous minutes of walking through neatly organized hallways, two of the...things...I saw before were walking the opposite direction in the same hallway as Angel Dog and I were. One looked like a kind of candle, but with glowing red eyes in a black void which I assumed was it's face. The other was a boy, probably about 18, clad in shades of purple, pink. and yellow, with an odd-looking matching triangular cap that hung down to the end of his neck, I think. Everyone shot each other a look, the boy looking at me far longer than he payed attention to Angel Dog. We eventually passed each other, but I heard a conversation between the two even after turning down another horizontal hallway.

"You think I should go for it?"

"No, she's new. Someone'll bring her here to greet you or something, then you make your move"

After what seemed like hours, we finally reached what was called, "Gregory's Room".

"Gregory! Get out here! You neeeed to see this!"

"Oh! I-I'll be right out!"

His voice was rough, and it wasn't a surprise to see that he was old, probably much older than most of the people in this weird building. I saw that, just like the first "person", if you could call it that, that I met, he was also a mouse with human proportions. He was wearing a very dilapidated pink jacket above a red and black striped shirt that honestly reminded me of Freddy Kreuger.

"Oh! Hello! You're Hazel, right? We've been waiting... Not in a creepy way, of course. I mean, you might have heard stories of people coming in here, never to be seen again, so I'm gonna let you in on a secret."

Oh boy.

"They're most likely dead. Now, you won't have that problem. Why? Well, we wouldn't be waiting for your arrival for no reason. You see,apparently an acquaintance of your strutted in here by chance one night."

"A-And what does that have to do with anything?" I realized that was the first time I had even spoken to this lazy-eyed rat.

"Well, eventually he... Passed. I'm not going to waste your time and go into detail. Before he slipped into his endless coma, he described you, and made us promise not to hurt you. We have enough souls for years to come, anyways, so we agreed. Come, let me show you to your room."

We walked for quite a while, but not as long as it took to get to Gregory's Room from what I assumed was the entrance. We did pass a few rooms, but they were all locked. At least, that's what Gregory said. My room ended up being right next to what looked like a dungeon of sorts. Gregory unlocked the door.

"Alright, here's where you'll be staying. I wouldn't recommend opening the window. Lost souls don't play by the rules." Gregory said, snickering under his breath before walking back to his room.

"Also, you might want to try to meet as many... Inhabitants of this hotel as you can. Don't want them to end up killing you on accident" Another snicker. Man, this guy was smug.

I put all of the clothes provided for me in the dresser that oddly opened on it's own from time to time. The clothes didn't look bad, it just kind of looked like the same outfit that I'd have to wear everyday. I didn't mind, though. It was around one in the morning from what I saw on the large analog clock on the wall. I crawled into the bed, just trying to sleep. I couldn't. Why? From the room next to me, I kept hearing horrific cries from what seemed like a cat, which bounced off of the walls and progressively became louder. I decided to see what this was, and see if there was any way I could stop it. I walked out of my room to see Gregory already outside of room 203, pounding on the door and telling whatever it was inside of there to shut up.

"Oh! Hello, Hazel. Sorry for the... Interruption. Maybe you could try to get the mangy fleabag to be quiet and stay quiet. Just take the key and open the door, but don't let him escape." Gregory said before he walked off.

I firmly grasped the large key in my hand, gently inserting it into the keyhole until I felt the steady _click _of the lock. The door creaked open, slowly coming ajar to show something I never thought I'd see. It was a cat, just as I had figured, yet it was horrifyingly sewn together. Think of it more as a mangled mess of cat parts put back together like a broken-down house. The cat let out another shrill cry of what I could assume what pain before turning my way and staring for a good two minutes.

"I'm hungry. So, so hungry. Do you have any food?"

I did. I always carried around a drawstring bag with me, if you're wondering. I pulled out one of the bags of chips I had, opened it, and gave it to the starving cat. He devoured the entire bag in a matter of seconds. I guess he really was starving.

"Th-Thank you, lady. I honestly don't know many people here that would do something like that." His childish voice turned to a whisper. "So, are you going to try to escape, or what?"

"Um... Well, Gregory said that nobody in here can hurt me, under an agreement of sorts, so I guess I can 'escape' at any time, I guess." I thought of how I should speak more, just so people can get to know me better.

"I see. Well, you should probably get out of here before Gregory sees us... Bonding, I guess. Gregory doesn't really like me..."

So I left.

I don't know when I ended up falling asleep, but I guess I did at some point, because I woke up. I actually woke up to a knock on my door.

"Hazel! You should probably get ready now! I'm going to take you to meet some of my... Friends."

From the sound of his voice alone, I could tell that it was Gregory outside of my door. I was a bit creeped out by the hesitation at the word "friends". I decided I had to get ready or someone would probably barge in on me when it looked like a tornado swept me up overnight. After I was ready, I stepped outside to see Gregory standing by one of the rooms that wasn't far from my own. It was marked with a gold 207, so I inferred it was room 207 because I have common sense. I knocked on the door at Gregory's request. No answer. I knocked again. Still no answer. Gregory told me to just open it and that my room was one of the only ones with a working lock. Unsurprisingly, it opened.

It was the boy from earlier, still dressed in his familiar purple, pink, and yellow clothes. He just kind of stared at Gregory before finally looking at me and speaking.

"You are an employee at a high-paying business. Today you will sign a contrac-"

"We talked about this, Judgement Boy."

"You want me to break the habit for this dimwit? No thanks."

"Anyways, Hazel, this is Judgement Boy. Judgement Boy, this is Hazel."

"It has a name now? How sweet. Though you really shouldn't name the cow before it heads to the slaughterhouse."

This "Judgement Boy" was incredibly snarky, and I loved it. Gregory let out a sigh of mental defeat and led me back to my room. However, it was... Closed off. Apparently Judgement Boy had followed us out.

"I can kick the door down if you want."

"N-No! This was all planned! I even have a room you'll be staying in, Hazel. All of our rooms are booked, so you'll have to share a room from what I've planned for you." Apparently, Gregory had a plan for everything. Even if it was last-second.

Finally, I spoke.

"Oh... That's... That's not a problem for me."

"Great! You'll be staying in room... 207. Good luck."

Judgement Boy put his hand to his face in what I could only assume was disappointment before walking back to his room. Since I guess it was my room too, I entered as well. Only then did I realize that the whole place was a huge mess. Clothes were strewn across the floor, as well as assorted sheet music for what looked like some sort of string instrument. There was a television, but it was turned off, probably to save power. There was also a smartphone charger plugged in by the bed, which most likely plugged into the phone that Judgement Boy was using at that moment.

"So... What's your... Thing? Like, what do you do?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"Everyone in here has some sort of stupid power granted to them as soon as they arrive, I think. I guess you can go to Catherine. She'll probably know. Also, you should give me your phone number. Not in a flirty way, or anything, but still."

So that's what I did. It was late at night, but Gregory ended up requesting my presence in Catherine's room anyways and the exchanging of numbers only took seconds before I ended up leaving. I don't know what I expected Catherine to look like, but it certainly wasn't what I saw. She was about my height and wearing a traditional nurse's outfit. I guess I should mention that she was, in fact, a large anthropomorphic pink lizard of some sort. The thing that bugged me the most were the impossible large syringes that hung on the wall, waiting to turn a human being into a shriveled mess of skin and bone.

"Catherine, this is Hazel. She's just here to see what she... Does here. And please, don't get carried away."

"Alright... But I'll have to take some... Blood..."

Judging from her voice, Catherine was definitely a female. What? You can't really expect anything around here. She ran some inspections, x-rays, and took one small blood sample, seemingly restraining herself from filling the whole syringe.

"With all this evidence, I can conclude that you're a... Shapeshifter. You can just focus on whatever you wanna be, I guess. Pretty cool. We haven't had a shapeshifter here in years."

I nodded my head in agreement and thanked Catherine before heading on my way. Walking back to my room (and getting lost on the way), I successfully turned myself into a cat. I have no idea why I decided to, but I did. The sudden transformation startled Judgement Boy a bit, before he realized that it was me and thus further ignored me. I spoke again.

"I'm going to bed."

"Whatever." he said, still focusing on the dim screen of a computer that was presumably running (from what I saw) World of Warcraft.

Then I slept.


End file.
